Revitalising town centres handbook launched

At the People & Places Partnership we are proud to have prepared new resources for the Local Government Association on revitalising town centres.

This new handbook and the accompanying online toolkit offer guidance to council leaders on how to approach the revitalisation of town and city centres. The guidance places an emphasis on delivering long-term impacts and using broad principles that can be tailored to meet local needs.

The handbook was informed by a LGA-led seminar of senior practitioners in November 2017 and it has been compiled jointly with the People & Places Partnership. It is intended to provide a high-level overview to guide councils in taking a strategic and evidence-based approach. The handbook contains suggestions of further reading, helpful resources and examples of good practice that can be accessed through a more extensive and detailed online toolkit.

Ask the businesses in any town centre about the issues that most perturb them and probably around half of them will say ‘parking’. Responses from customers will be less predictable depending on their needs and the parking provided. Read more »

Over recent years we have all witnessed Government-backed campaigns to both save the High Street and engage communities in planning, operating in parallel. Our approach is that issues like town centre retail and edge of town housing impact on each other and should be considered together – especially in small towns. To stretch a metaphor, anything else would be like taking the meat out of the sandwich! Read more »

“The case study amply covers all we did and we are moving in totally the right direction with the endorsement of our Executive Board. Wider town centre regeneration is moving forward positively with different aspects slotting into place and the parking strategy was critical in focusing stakeholders’ thinking. Enough to say that we chose the right consultants”.

We approached the People and Places Partnership to implement some town centre benchmarking for us in anticipation of physical improvement schemes around the county. Mike King was immensely helpful and accessible. He met with our planners and added a great deal of value from the planning stage onwards…

Sam Jones, Economic Development Officer, Nottinghamshire CC

We were impressed that People and Places met all milestones in a timely manner and went the extra mile to get the information we needed within the timescale provided. They could not have been more accommodating and we felt that unlike other companies, they offered a bespoke customer service.

Their findings were both useful, fascinating and have given insights to inform our work.